Step 9: Voila

It all started as a weekend project with my kids and soon enough I got sucked into a 4 month project with their school !

The idea was to get a small group of kids aged 6 to 9 to participate to a robotics contest (http://www.eurobot.org/eng/index.php). It was a fun journey and they did really well as they went all the way to the European finals (and ranked 19th) with their hacked vacuum cleaner.

I delivered to the team a set of bricks I am going to detail in this instructable.

Each brick is fairly simple to build and requires no soldering. I have: - a nunchuk controlled arduino that drives the roomba. - a nunchuk controlled arduino which in turn controls up to 6 servos. - servos integrated into 'meccano' pieces for kid-friendly use.

So nothing incredibly new here, just bolting existing stuff together... I tripped over enough difficulties that I thought it would be worthwhile summing everything up here...

easy yes , but very time consuming.but on the bight side once u have it down to those number then u can carry to the next roomba an so on.

I thought iRobots were cheaper than Roombas, since the iRobot doesn't have all the vaccuming stuff on it. Or did you just already have the Roomba on hand?

Got mine used at 'garage sales'. Paid between 25 and 45 euros per roomba... <br>

At least on an old Roomba Discovery, any old keyboard or mouse PS/2 connector will replace the MiniDin if you remove the plastic key in the center. Not all the pins connect, but the serial, wake, battery power and ground are all present. I love the instructable, it looks way more powerful and possibly cheaper than a Lego Mindstorms!

Good trick ! PS/2 are much easier to find than the cables I suggest. <br>Thanks!